VERBUM SAP. 249 
arms, as obsolete for capturing votes as the birdlime 
and stalking-horse of the ‘Gentleman’s Recreation’ for 
making a bag of partridges. 
Lord Coleridge, whose views upon the game laws 
have proved of immense value to some of the worst 
criminals in the country, but, so far as one can discover, 
to nobody else, had a charming experience of the 
popularity of his political views, as proceeding from 
the mouth of an English judge, some years ago in 
Liverpool. Being called upon for a speech after a 
political dinner, and surrounded as he was by good 
Liberals—it was before the Home Rule split—he 
conceived. the ingenious idea, in that commercial 
city, of adding to his popularity by an unmeasured 
attack upon the laws relating to the preservation of 
game. His philippic was received in ominous silence 
by the twenty or thirty men present, constituting the 
flower of the Liberal party in Liverpool. Turning to 
his neighbour, he remarked that he feared his speech 
had somehow fallen flat. That gentleman observed 
that no doubt it had, since, with hardly an exception, 
every man in the room was a keen sportsman, and 
two-thirds of them preserved game. 
The game laws constitute in a sense a political 
question from their close connection with the land 
question ; but, in spite of the cheap and antiquated 
